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We will have to abandon the philosophy of Democritus and the concept of elementary particles. We should accept instead the concept of elementary symmetries.
Werner Heisenberg
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Werner Heisenberg
Age: 74 †
Born: 1901
Born: December 5
Died: 1976
Died: February 1
Academic
Mathematician
Mountaineer
Non-Fiction Writer
Nuclear Physicist
Physicist
Theoretical Physicist
University Teacher
Kreisfreie Stadt Würzburg
Werner Karl Heisenberg
Heisenberg
Werner K. Heisenberg
Philosophy
Elementary
Particles
Abandon
Concept
Concepts
Accept
Accepting
Democritus
Instead
Symmetry
More quotes by Werner Heisenberg
The more closely you look at one thing, the less closely can you see something else.
Werner Heisenberg
The structure underlying the phenomena is not given by material objects like the atoms of Democritus but by the form that determines the material objects. The Ideas are more fundamental than the objects.
Werner Heisenberg
It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.
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Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables.
Werner Heisenberg
By getting to smaller and smaller units, we do not come to fundamental or indivisible units. But we do come to a point where further division has no meaning.
Werner Heisenberg
What we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Our scientific work in physics consists in asking questions about nature in the language that we possess and trying to get an answer from experiment by the means that are at our disposal.
Werner Heisenberg
In my paper the fact the XY was not equal to YX was very disagreeable to me. I felt this was the only point of difficulty in the whole scheme...and I was not able to solve it.
Werner Heisenberg
Science clears the fields on which technology can build.
Werner Heisenberg
A consistent pursuit of classical physics forces a transformation in the very heart of that physics.
Werner Heisenberg
It was about three o'clock at night when the final result of the calculation [which gave birth to quantum mechanics] lay before me ... At first I was deeply shaken ... I was so excited that I could not think of sleep. So I left the house ... and awaited the sunrise on top of a rock.
Werner Heisenberg
My mind was formed by studying philosophy, Plato and that sort of thing.
Werner Heisenberg
The conception of objective reality ... has thus evaporated ... into the transparent clarity of mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of particles but rather our knowledge of this behavior.
Werner Heisenberg
I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.
Werner Heisenberg
Many people will tell you that an expert is someone who knows a great deal about the subject. To this I would object that one can never know much about any subject. I would much prefer the following definition: an expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in the subject, and how to avoid them.
Werner Heisenberg
I believe that the existence of the classical path can be pregnantly formulated as follows: The path comes into existence only when we observe it.
Werner Heisenberg
There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
Werner Heisenberg
The problems of language here are really serious. We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atoms. But we cannot speak about atoms in ordinary language.
Werner Heisenberg
Unless you stake your life, life will not be won.
Werner Heisenberg
Nonsense. Space is blue and birds fly through it.
Werner Heisenberg
The discontinuous 'reduction of the wave packets' which cannot be derived from Schroedinger's equation is ... a consequence of the transition from the possible to the actual.
Werner Heisenberg
